Why, oh why, oh why...?

So I just had my first class. And am left mulling over the same questions I find myself mulling over every year. The difference between this year and every other year, however, is that this year I have a blog. So instead of keeping this mulling thing to myself, I get to mull out loud to the whole internet:

• Why do students always spend the first week doing baffled frog impressions? (Eyes wide, mouth slack, looking like they'll leap 100 ft into the air if I so much as make eye contact with them).


• Why, in a class of silent people, is there always one person who feels bad for you and ends up answering every question? And why doesn't the rest of the class feel bad for him/her, even if they don't feel bad for me, and pull their weight?


• Why is there always a student who writes something so hilariously and unintentionally funny on their assignment that you desperately want to share it with the whole internet?*


• Why is there always one person who has looked up every technical term from the lectures in the Concise Oxford dictionary? Then the fact that the dictionary definitions are not identical to the ones used in the course makes her brain explode and she lies in wait for unwary tutors in the hallway to point out (nicely) that you are wrong because the dictionary says so. (Actually, that isn't every year. I guess this semester is just special.)


• Why does no one ever ever ever read the syllabus? You know, the one that explains that you had to have your first assignment handed in by last Friday. So that I could return it in class today. Which means that (a) saying "I didn't do it because I didn't know it was assessable" (b) bringing it to class today because you couldn't find the box to put it in on Friday or (c) saying "I didn't know we had to hand it in" (because, you know, I can mark things by telepathy) are all going to get you penalised. What sort of penalty? The penalty listed on the syllabus. you. freaks.


• And when a student asks a smart question about the assignment -- one that shows he has been thinking about it and making connections and maybe even doing extra reading, and you answer it and he "gets" it so that his eyes light up and you see his mind scrabble around and heave itself up to the next level of the rock-pile that is the discipline, and then you see him realise how much better the view is from up there than it was five minutes ago -- how come then, all of a sudden, these hassles and irritations are just so worth it?

_________
* But you won't because you know that there's a real danger the student might google the keywords from their sentence and find their own work being mocked by their tutor. (Which is probably not a good way to go about encouraging them to open up more in class.)

Technorati tags: teaching, academia